Tag Archive: pregnancy centers

For a considerable period of time, Christine Quinn was the apparent front-runner and according to many insiders, she was destined to be the Queen of Gotham. Along the campaign trail, many insiders attached to her a wicked lust for achieving power, lobbying access, money, and an opportunity to loot the city treasury. People thought it was her destiny to win, but as it turns out her destiny was to lose. Former Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio once said forget everything you think you know and remember destino, which in Italian means destiny.

Quinn never realized that some of her fellow council members really did not like her, and the ones that did like her was because they selfishly picked the fig tree like Dominic Recchia, who took a lot of cannoli’s but couldn’t deliver a provolone sandwich on Primary Day. Not to mention Republican sellouts from Staten Island to all parts of NYC that embarrassed themselves in front of the leaders of their own party, their constituents, and most importantly, themselves when they look in the mirror. They took, took, took, and sold out, sold out, sold out, but couldn’t deliver a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry.

Drinking her own Kool-aide. Quinn’s book sales never topped 100. Did she really think she was special? Quinn forgot that she’s here to serve the city and we are not here to serve her.

The horse and carriage fiasco abruptly stopped her rise to the top. Quinn’s coldness toward animals in the horse and carriage industry showed voters her true colors as animal lovers across the city realized that she was not to be trusted with public power.

Not being nice to Donny Moss. Donny Moss, like many of her constituents, had legitimate concerns. And like thousands of her other constituents, Donny Moss was ignored, but this time she picked on the wrong constituent. After all, City Council money can only buy off some people. In the end, you have to be there for all your constituents.

Attacking the pregnancy centers. The pro-life movement, although often marginalized (and seen as counter cultural in NYC) was able to throw a left hook when nearly every Latino minister in NYC was notified of her attacks on pregnancy centers that give alternatives to abortion. You don’t have to be spiritual to know a small marginalized group can sometimes be surrounded by angels.

Quinn’s poor treatment of the McManus Democratic club. You can’t ignore the biggest democratic club in the city that happens to be in your district. While trying to expand other bases, power at home atrophied, and in the end Quinn was unable to garner enough support even in her home base.

The Queens County Democratic Machine’s decades long pattern of suppressing elections, nepotism, and cronyism led to a County organization who’s elected officials are disconnected to the constituents they represent. Less maneuvering and more community organizing and maybe one citywide primary and they’ll get it right.

Her operative’s bright idea to try and bully and harass the editorial board of Queens-Politics backfired and ended up dividing the north Queens community as longtime friends and friendly acquaintances became bitter enemies with some issues still unresolved. Caught in the crossfire were lobbyists, their family members, as well as pro-lifers and their family members, Enough said, you can all figure out who won.

The Anybody But Quinn movement. A coalition led by ideological activists and masterminded by the Advance Group with the help of Arthur Cheliotes and the CWA was able to body slam her public image at the last-minute.

Naming the Queensborough Bridge the Ed Koch Bridge while Ed Koch was still alive so she could apply pressure to a public figure for an endorsement ended up leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths. Word is, in Astoria, when her canvassers would knock on doors, voters would slam the door in their face. Nothing against the late, great Ed Koch, but she tried to kiss up to a senior citizen without regards for Queens residents. The Bridge should have been renamed after his passing and not used to put pressure on him for an endorsement.

Dante’s Afro. After the circus that Quinn, Liu, and Weiner put the city through, it was Bill de Blasio’s son that closed the deal for the confused and often frustrated voters of NYC.

Please note, Quinn operatives will deny to themselves that these are the real reasons she lost the election, not to mention their ego’s are too big to give Donny Moss or the McManus Democratic Club any credit. Instead, they will blame Bloomberg yada yada yada go drink your Kool-Aid and remember you can’t hurt people and think there will be no consequences. With that being said, the Queens-Politics editorial board would like to say that Quinn and her merry band of influence peddlers should have been thanking God for the nice run they had instead of attacking His little ones in the womb and disrespecting His creation in the horse and carriage industry.

Last week, as we celebrated St. Patrick and Irish American Catholic culture, it is interesting to note how each of the candidates for public office often go to St. Patrick’s Day parties and march in St. Patrick’s Day parades, but one candidate stood out from the festive celebration and not in any honorable way. Mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn strutted into the McManus Democratic Club pre-parade breakfast like she was the Belle of the Ball but her welcome was not exactly, well, welcomed – even the most Progressive of Irish American New Yorkers knew she did not belong there. A partygoer remarked, “I just threw up my Guiness.”

Whether you love or hate the Long Island native turned Manhattan-elite, Ms. Quinn, we don’t really know who she is, but if you want to know her, and understand her agenda, we must take a look at whom insiders in the pro-life movement claim Christine Quinn’s spiritual godmother is: none other than the notorious Merle Hoffman.

Scratch the surface of Quinn the lawmaker, and her campaign announcement reveals more about her character than she may have intended. She chose to shoot the video in front of a church where she claimed her parents were married. She also told the public in one of her first sentences that her mother was an employee of Catholic charities. That’s all fine rhetoric, but in what turned out to be a failed attempt at trying to connect with the Catholic vote in NYC, she bragged about her clinic access program which was the brainchild of Christine Quinn’s mentor and spiritual consultant Merle Hoffman.

As a de facto abortion czar of NYC, Hoffman’s radical philosophy has moved Quinn in such a way that she has clearly influenced her public policies.

Hoffman is the founder of Choices Women’s Center in Long Island City, and is known as an entrepreneur in abortion services. Her clinics have killed more babies than probably any other clinics in the United States. ‘You know how many women have had abortions?’ Hoffman asks. “Abortion is as American as apple pie.”

Hoffman pictured here with Speaker Quinn.

Hoffman recently opened up a clinic at Jamaica hospital where she promised 10,000 abortions a year, provided in part by what she calls the “down-south-surge” or the influx of patients she says will come from states with more limits on abortion laws. Her organization has been stirring up trouble even before the landmark Roe V. Wade. Most recently, when Catholic Nuns and pro-life pastors (most of whom are Irish, Hispanic, and African-American) decided to hold peaceful prayer vigils outside the Jamaica facility, Hoffman reached out to her spiritual protégé Christine Quinn and they both decided it would be a good opportunity to make headlines. While Hoffman is not known to pray, it is rumored she is often praying for violence against her clinics because it would be a feather in her cap to be able to have an Irish-American nun arrested. But when there was no violence, they decided to fabricate it in order to seek attention. Merle Hoffman unjustly dubbed them, “The American Taliban,” a reference that even Quinn later rebuked. In reality it was a small group of Irish-American nuns and African-American and Hispanic pastors who would hold innocent prayer vigils outside of Choices. The news, however, left that fact out.

Hoffman made millions in the abortion industry and it has come with a fair share of bashing from both sides, including feminists whom have often criticized her for using the pro-choice movement to become one of the richest individuals in New York. But it’s her influence she holds over Quinn that is quite concerning. Hoffman was one of the main spiritual advisors that pushed Quinn into supporting a law that was intended to destroy pregnancy centers (she said it was a milestone of her career). These centers offer alternatives to abortion, but Hoffman made her millions off the fees associated with abortions (they aren’t free). The Pregnancy Centers proved to be quite the financial risk to her abortion mill. Quinn and Hoffman also proposed funding “escorts” to accompany women to abortion centers to protect them from the elderly clergy and spiritually motivated peaceful protestors with taxpayer money in what was dubbed the Clinic Protection Project.

Hoffman proposed a sick twist in the abortion debate that sent a shockwave across both sides of the aisle. She framed abortion not as a religious issue but as an act of love. “I was fighting to reclaim abortion as a mother’s act,” she wrote in her autobiographical novel Intimate Wars. According to Hoffman, these women were making “a decision so vital it was worth stopping the heart.”

Furthering her radical beliefs, she created uproar in pro-choice and pro-rights communities when she said that abortions are murder.

But the pain and regret women often feel after an abortion is ignored by Hoffman’s teaching. From depression, nightmares, or just the feeling of losing someone in their life, none of these indications are evidence that abortion was an act of love to the women who aborted. Hoffman didn’t seem to care. “I wasn’t immune to the physicality of abortion, the blood, the tissue, and observable body parts. My political and moral judgments on the nature of abortion evolved throughout the years, but I quickly came to realize that those who deliver abortion services have not only the power to give women control of their bodies and lives but also the power and responsibility of taking life in order to do that.”

Her beliefs are so twisted and perverse that she actually claimed that abortion is an act of love for one’s family and for one’s child.

Do we really want a mayor who has taken spiritual and moral advice from Merle Hoffman? Every other candidate, Republican and Democrat, support Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose, however no other candidate is known to have such a hostile adversity to motherhood and to babies and no other candidate has ever conspired with Hoffman to try to destroy freedom of religious speech and clinics that offer alternatives to abortion.

It is a shame that the Italian-American Catholics such as Dominick Recchia will collaborate with Quinn and not hold her accountable for what many people call, at best, unethical conduct, and at worst, demoniacal conduct — just to gain some political capital. Recchia does not even realize that his campaign for U.S Congress has been jeopardized because of his failure to stand up to Quinn but rather in a stunning reversal acting as a team in collaboration as she attacks the values of his conservative Irish-American and Italian-American constituents.

The next time Christine Quinn is at a St. Patrick’s Day parade or is doing a fake press conference purposefully in front of a church, let’s not forget as Catholic voters that she is the most anti-life and worst Christian persecutors the city has ever seen. It is so bad that Devout Catholics and Prominent Irish Americans have an ‘anyone but Quinn mentality’. Will the critical Irish-American communities in the primary including Bay Ridge, Rockaway, Woodlawn, and Glendale express at the polls that Christine Quinn by the nature of her attacks on the pregnancy centers is probably the most anti-Irish Catholic candidate in NYC history? Saint Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland lets hope the religious community votes her out of City Hall forever.

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? The Yankee Clipper must be rolling in his grave as Randy Levine bankrolls Christine Quinn’s bid for Mayor.

Baseball is the last bastion of purity, a place where we take our children and now the President of the Yankees is supporting Christine Quinn’s agenda? Well folks, it certainly looks like it. Last month, Levine dumped $4,950 into Quinn’s war chest and there’s no way to quantify how much bundling for Quinn he’s really responsible for.

The Yanks have always stood up for what’s good and right in the world throughout their history. The Babe loved children and Christie Quinn is giving them Morning-after pills? Talk about striking out, I bet those conservative fans that travel from Westchester and Connecticut will become outraged to hear their money is vicariously supporting such a person. If Billy Martin was around and he heard Randy Levine was supporting Quinn you can bet he would be kicking dirt.

But Levine is no stranger to playing politics while heading the Yanks ball club. In 2008, he served as a bundler for presidential candidate John McCain and in September 2012, he donated $17,500 to the Republican National Committee. He’s also made multiple contributions to Mitt Romney including a $2500 donation made last September as well as donations to other political candidates. Oddly enough the occupation field alternates between The New York Yankees and Akin Gimp Strauss Flowerfield, the NYC based law firm where Levine is partner.

But this time fans won’t be cheering when they hear that their beloved team is being used as a pawn in an elaborate scheme to support Christine Quinn. In baseball you’re supposed to learn about teamwork, but Quinn is a dictator. In baseball you get kicked out for cheating, but now the Yankees are promoting someone who has never come clean with her slush fund scandal. In baseball you’re supposed to play fair, but she puts the hammer on City Council members that don’t follow her agenda. In baseball you have to stand up at the plate, but Quinn has never stood up for Queens. In baseball you don’t get to change the rules if you don’t like them, but Quinn overturned term limits.

So why would the President of the New York Yankees Ball Club bankroll such a person?

When she’s going after free speech and pregnancy centers, can you imagine Mickey Mantle or Lou Gehrig supporting such anti-American behavior or Donny Baseball not being outraged by such conduct? Levine made a very poor choice and we’re hoping the Steinbrenner family reconsiders.

And what about The Yankee Clipper? Joe DiMaggio – who famously thanked the good Lord for making him a Yankee – and loved Marilyn Monroe so much he would send a dozen roses to her grave until the day he died? Joe would be outraged to hear his beloved Yankees involved in supporting such a nasty power-hungry Christian-basher.

Joe, there’s nothing fun about the owner of your team playing a dangerous game of supporting Quinn’s immoral and corrupt public policies. We need a hit Joe, we need a home run for baseball, and Christine Quinn is not it. Fans beware.

Rumor has it a few high-ranking GOP operatives have turned their backs on the pro-life movement by helping Democratic Candidate Christine Quinn’s bid for Mayor.

Inside religious political circles, Quinn is considered the strongest adversary of religious free speech in New York City – infamously dubbed “public enemy number one to the faithful,” according to a source familiar with the situation.

A small number of these legacy Republicans are alleged to be aiding and abating her campaign for a quick buck and a political capital windfall should she win the Mayoral race.

Imagine this scenario: young men receive high level positions in government based on the hard work of their fathers, many of whom are considered “heroic, honorable, pro-life advocates that have dedicated their lives to God’s work and saving unborn babies,” according to the source. But instead of continuing their father’s work, they are alleged to be helping Quinn’s campaign for Mayor.

In response, a grassroots movement known as “Salve Regina” is sweeping across NYC.

“Salve Regina” is an attempt to educate Christian parishioners, Evangelicals, and Jewish Synagogues of Quinn’s agenda to suppress religious free speech by raising awareness of her attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life advocates.

When their message becomes salient, she could lose all support from church going democrats particulary African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and conservative whites in the outer boroughs, even though these demographics were already said to prefer one or more of her opponents.

Are those Republicans that are secretly helping Quinn now at a state of political war with the defenders of life? Will there be a backlash against the turncoats? Will these sell outs try to put political hits on the pro-lifers in order to gain favor with Christine Quinn?

Could there already be an organized movement to defeat undeclared mayoral candidate Christine Quinn? A man who’s work saved over 45,000 unborn children from certain death says he plans to deliver many times that number to vote against her.

The Founder of Expectant Mother Care is a kingpin of religious Catholics in New York. Accusing Quinn of “Gestapo-like tactics,” he’s galvanizing the Pro-Life movement for a voting bloc against a Quinn term—and some analysts say it could cause Quinn to stumble.

Chris Slattery is well known in churches of all denominations and founded the nonprofit group, Expectant Mother Care to encourage expectant moms to choose motherhood, and either marriage, adoption, or self-sufficiency, instead of abortion, according to the website.

Traditionally, social conservatives were considered a swing demographic, hard to predict, often marginalized, but never to be underestimated because of their large numbers says William Ferraro, a political consultant from the Pendulum Network.

Social conservatives were historically and traditionally Democrats, but the political climate has changed. Social conservatives support socially conservative ideology, which means that their votes could potentially go to a candidate with little concern for party enrollment.

For example, during the Presidential Election of 2000, a study found that 40 percent of the total vote for George Bush came from Christian Evangelicals, making it the largest single voting bloc in the Republican Party. However, Black Protestant voters, majorities of whom are Evangelical, voted 96 percent for Pro-Choice Democrat Al Gore and only 4 percent for George Bush, the Pro-Life candidate.

There are recent trends that indicate a change from the unpredictability of a socially conservative voting bloc. Single-issue positions like being Pro-Life or Pro-Choice seem to trump any party loyalty, even religious affiliation. This trend was a key factor in the election of Republican Congressman Bob Turner.

When Turner a Pro-Life Catholic businessman ran against an orthodox Pro-Choice Jewish Democrat David Weprin, Turner’s campaign launched a series of ads aimed squarely at the orthodox Jewish vote in the Ninth Congressional District, where Democrats enjoy a significant enrollment advantage. This demographic group rallied behind Turner because Weprin had voted in the state legislature for the same-sex marriage bill.

Republican campaign operative Steven Stites anticipates a problem for Quinn if the debate is framed by a stance on Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, which hasn’t happened yet. “If the issue is framed by her position on Pro-Life centers, there could be a problem during the general, but during a primary, social conservatives are under-represented,” according to Stites.

“Slattery is correct to be upset, but attacks from the right during a primary aren’t necessarily a bad thing for Quinn,” Stites added.

Is the axe coming down on Speaker Quinn as opposed to any of the other Democratic candidates? Could they swing votes away from Quinn and toward John Liu, Bill de Blasio, Scott Stringer, Tony Avella, or any other candidates? Yes, it could, if Slattery has anything to do with it. He wants Quinn’s policy maneuvering against crisis pregnancy centers to define her candidacy.

While the other potential candidates are also Pro-Choice, according to insiders in Slattery’s group no other candidate has the viciousness demonstrated by Quinn toward religious free speech.

Quinn and Bloomberg signed Local Law 17, which required crisis pregnancy centers, like Expectant Mother Care, to disclose more information about what services they perform and whom they will be provided by. Critics say the measure would force crisis pregnancy centers to advertise services they do not offer. The City Council approved the bill that would have placed strict limits on the advertising crisis pregnancy centers may use and required them to post signs designed to discourage women from seeking their abortion alternatives services.

Quinn called the matter a protection of consumer rights.

However Pro-Life advocates like Slattery say the bill put harsh restrictions on alternatives to abortions, such as adoption and counseling.

The law Quinn signed was challenged in Federal Court. Slattery’s group, EMC was one of the plaintiffs. A stay was issued, and according to legal experts it will probably be overturned. Judge William Pauley said the bill was “unconstitutionally vague”, although he conceded the harm that can be caused to pregnant, at-risk women by unlicensed ultrasound technicians “operating in pseudo-medical settings”.

Slattery hailed the decision as a victory for the First Amendment.

“The legislation was [Quinn’s] baby and [City Councilwoman] Jessica Lapin’s baby, we warned them it was unconstitutional to shut down our life saving operation” said Slattery. “But they went ahead anyway.”

Slattery alleges that Planned Parenthood and Naral New York may have been influencing Quinn’s active pursuit of bill 371 .

Naral Pro-Choice NY, then led then by Kellie Conlin, who was forced out in January from her post after pleading guilty to stealing $75,000 worth of donations from the organization said in a press release, “Unfortunately, when a woman enters a Crisis Pregnancy Center, she loses all expectation of accurate, unbiased information and any assurance of privacy. Instead, she is faced with biased counseling, anti-abortion propaganda, deliberate deception, and emotional manipulation.”

Slattery responded to Naral’s accusations,

“The woman [Kellie Conlin] who was forced out – that called us frauds – while she’s committing fraud” exclaimed Slattery who called it a “repugnant characterization” of his group “that was intended to be offensive.”

The dispute put Quinn in the crosshairs of social conservative voters who tend to support the use of government to reinforce traditional social relations, according to a Pew research report. So is it enough to galvanize a Pro-Life voting bloc, the same bloc vote once thought to be too unpredictable to be considered an effective movement in city elections?

Slattery’s movement is gaining traction.

Chris Slattery is more than an outspoken Quinn critic, he is well known by key members of all denominations that connect him to thousands of parishioners in all five boroughs.

In January, 2010 Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, a Pro-Life activist and a leader of the black community held a Pro-Life rally in Manhattan side-by-side with Chris Slattery of Expectant Mother Care where she encouraged opposition to Bill 371.

City Council Member Fernando Cabrera (D-Bronx), also the only Reverend in the City Council is a staunch advocate of Slattery’s movement.

Cabrera, who for the last four years, has co-chaired the Hispanic-Jewish Relations Task Force for the Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, began a church called New Life Outreach International, a congregation that has swelled to over 400 members. He is also well known in a network of Evangelical churches that are spreading like wildfire throughout the five boroughs, according to inside sources.

Will they come out on election day?

“It’s a set of core values that unites us,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone) who spoke at a Save The Life Center rally. Council District 19 is the most ethnically and religiously diverse in the City. Protestant groups, Baptists, Lutherans, Hindus, Catholics, and a large Jewish demographic of conservative, orthodox, and reform Jews can be found in the northeast section of Queens. “We all coexist because we respect the values of our community, said Halloran, adding “We will not back down and we will continue to advocate for you.”

Critics fear that Quinn has awoken a sleeping giant. With six or seven possible candidates running, if her campaign thinks she will win with the social conservative base actively campaigning against her, she could be gravely mistaken.

There could be 5,000 parishes, temples, and synagogues turning against her. Will the residents be so upset that they vote for another candidate or is it just a case of saber rattling?

“It was a use of raw political power in a complete disregard for the first amendment and the rights of Christians and almost all Catholic and Christian Pro Lifers” said Slattery.

“I am in fear and trepidation in her run for mayor, she will put the jackboot to Christians in the city and stomp on our necks for us to cry uncle and to shutdown millennial old moral underpinnings and traditions,” he added.

Slattery said the Pro-Life movement would not support candidates that are Pro-Choice. But Quinn took it a step further with her bill that would have crippled Expectant Mother Care and other crisis pregnancy centers that Pro-Lifers like Slattery have embraced.

Slattery believed the bill was a direct challenge to his organization’s mission, but so far, the other candidates have not been as active as Quinn with the intent of shutting down the life centers.

“Bloomberg and Quinn use the schools as an experiment in birth and population control, they have completely disregarded the astounding abortion rates and ratios in New York,” Slattery said. “They think the only way to prevent pregnancy is to flood the city with more condoms.”

Slattery agreed that while“they [public schools] haven’t had overtly bad sex education, its covertly and without former curriculum: tie-ins and programs to escort school children to planned parenthood, it’s been happening for 40 years.”

“Reading writing arithmetic, mapping out roots to the abortion — this man is crazy. Quinn is even more radical than Bloomberg.”

Socially conservative groups like Slattery’s could be the deciding factor in the Democratic primary, much in the same way the socially conservative religious voting bloc came out in force for the election of Congressman Bob Turner in Queens and Brooklyn.

Quinn’s decision to support Local Law 17 was influenced by her campaign contributors Slattery alleged.

“Its all about who she’s getting her campaign funds from: Naral Pro-choice, Planned Parenthood, the abortionists. The Catholic press is softball, they won’t name names and they don’t really call these politicians to account, they decry the whole body. Pastors don’t play enough hardball. They’ve been emasculated by there fear of politicians. I don’t understand them, the people in the pews will be making the decisions.”

If Quinn loses these voters, as Slattery believes she will, it is likely that these votes will go to John Liu, a Queens native, according to a Democratic official. Lots of people are already behind John Liu, and it is widely rumored that Quinn threw him under the bus with a recent ruling regarding campaign signs and a probe of questionable campaign contributions.

Queens Democratic Party Boss Joe Crowley, who is Pro-Life, and was raised in the cradle of old school conservatives of Irish decent would be caught in the middle. “Because of Joe Crowley’s prominence in the Irish-Catholic community – he would understand better than most people what’s coming” said Elio Forcina, a Republican, and former Assembly candidate who also helped organize a fundraiser for Expectant Mother Care in May 2011 for an ultra sound machine that is currently being used in Brooklyn.

“If the Catholic parishes, the evangelicals, and the synagogues all unite, they could ultimately derail Quinn’s campaign,” according to Forcina. “May the fruits that grow out of this movement ultimately be Christine Quinn’s redemption,” he said.

Religious convictions appear to trump party loyalty. Many Americans continue to say their religious beliefs have been influential in shaping their views about social issues, including abortion and same-sex marriage, according to Pew research, but it doesn’t always translate into votes. It’s how a liberal and a conservative like Fernando Cabrera and Dan Halloran and a civil rights leader like Dr. Aveda King can find some common ground.

The potential galvanization of socially conservative church-going voters against Christine Quinn as the Democratic nominee for Mayor should not go unnoticed. Bill 371 has been the rallying cry. Past elections can illustrate the voting bloc as fickle and unreliable. How likely is it that the bloc would vote for a Lesbian Democrat from the West Side of Manhattan, anyway? Not very likely, but there are recent examples that may prove the observation as not entirely accurate. Quinn may have inadvertently energized Pro-Life voters against her campaign at the same time a massive mobilization of Pro-Lifers appears to be underway unlike anything New York City has seen before.